Lord Jim a Christ Figure
How come it has taken me a generation to understand that?
sharesheesh, and they even made it easy for you, putting "Lord" right in the title ...
MovieChat Forums > Lord Jim (1965) Discussion > Lord Jim a Christ Figure
I can't imagine Christ would abandon 800 poor souls , just to save his own hide.
Not to mention the number of people he killed.
I don't know as I'd agree. As Brown points out (and manipulates), Jim smells like a sinner looking for redemption.
That's not Christ-like. Christ suffered for the sins of all, Jim tries to escape his own.
If anything, I think that the film (not the novel) concludes with a very Buddhist slant, portraying Jim at his final moment at peace with the world and prepared to die, looking about him serenely and accepting nature and his place in it.
This is backed up by the very Buddhist "Girl" who joyously embraces his death... unlike her counterpart in the novel who more understandably feels betrayed by Jim's willingness to die.
Lord Jim dies for his own sins, not anyone else's. He is not Christ-like in any way, except perhaps how a writer with extremely ambivalent attitudes towards white colonialism might, purely ironically, portray this character as 'Christlike.'
shareI think Conrad writes about what lies in the soul of every man.
Jim was no Christ, he was tortured by his "super Ego" in the same way as all men.
Absolutely not! Jim has delusions of grandeur and cannot live an ordinary life with a woman who loves him. He may behave in a messianic way but Conrad - and the film - may quite clear he is flawed and all too human.
The distance is nothing. The first step is the hardest.share
Lord Jim -- and the title is obviously a reference to Christ -- is an IRONIC Christ figure.